Building an Agroecological Urbanism

in conversation

Agroecological farmers and cities are insufficiently understanding and finding each other.

How can we move beyond the conversation stoppers that block the identification of shared matters of concern?

This building block aims to contribute to the reconfiguration of the political pedagogies of the agroecological movement in a way better fit to address the challenges posed by current processes of urbanisation and the residualisation of agroecological farming.

Proximity matters and comes at a price

Von Thünen was right

Soil care is a practice. It is something that happens day in and day out. In that sense, soil policy should not only be about how to protect soils, but is also about how to take care of the people who take care of soils.

Taking care of soil carers

Seven stories for radical soil care, OVAM

Prioritising soil-based growing

La Cité Maraîchère de Romainville

London

Farming the urban fringe

Brussels

Gardening contested lands

The city is just a market.

Rosario

Agroecology as public policy

Working and living on protected farmland

Agricultural Colonies Argentina

Urbanisation destroys agriculture.

Agriculture is not an urban issue.

There is enough space to grow food elsewhere, there are more pressing needs for space close to the city.

Riga

Food systems as social systems

Agriculture is just a function on the urban land use map that has not been rezoned yet.

Creating a shared future through soil care

Roving microscope

Spaces for collaboration

Atelier Groot-Eiland

Building Block

Territorial Food Hub

The territorial food hub is an organisation that is a central component (or node) of a wider agroecological food system or network that operates within, and is closely identified with, a specific neighbourhood or district.

I don't want urban organic waste on my farm. Keep your waste please. Wood chips on the other hand you can drop off as much as you want.

Organic waste from a farmer's perspective

Keep your waste please

Building Block

Landed Community Kitchen

Community kitchens coordinate large-scale food sourcing, food cooking, and availability of food to large numbers of people. This building block addresses the challenge to bridge the gap between social movements and community initiatives.

Sharing among family members, friends, neighbours and colleagues

Pašam sava lauku māja ar lielu augļu dārzu

Growing space as planning requirements

La Ferme du Chant des Cailles, Brussels

Building Block

Land & Market Access Incubator

The Land & Market Access Incubator develops institutional support for agroecology and coordinates this with an appropriate programme for farmers to access land, skills, infrastructure and markets at the same time.

Territorial coordination of municipal public policy

Cinturón Verde Rosario

Practice at the heart of learning approaches

Diálogo de Saberes

Andre is the arable farmer and we shift with him in his crop rotation. We move with our 3 hectares every year within his 100 ha farm.

Matryoshka doll farmers

Tuinderij De Stroom

When agroecology reorganises your municipality

Urban Centre for Agroecology

Building Block

Healthy Soil Scape

Healthy Soil Scape imagines what putting healthy soils at the centre of urban landscapes could look like. It considers the ways in which humans and non-humans look after each other through the medium of soil, and how these caring relationships can be strengthened.

Agroecological food production is too expensive for the urban poor.

A translocal network of agroecologists

Red de municipios por la agroecología

Growing and living together within new patterns of use

Lucavsala Island

The agricultural system is organised (inter)nationally, rendering cities powerless.

Urban agriculture is not agriculture.

Taking root in neighbourhoods

The Huerta Urban Agriculture Programme, Rosario

Material Feminists against patriarchy

The Grand Domestic Revolution

Building territorial governance capacities

Bio-städte, Ökoregion

The city is first of all an opportunity to sell my products (at a higher price).

Growing on damaged land

Guide d’observation pour des sols vivants

Building on the effective use of zoning as a counterspeculative measure

Parque Agrario de Fuenlabrada

I will now speak of the immense impetus I believe co-operative housekeeping would give to farming, and the revolution it would bring to it. [...] It will be the first aim of the co-operative housekeepers then, [...] to secure for each society a landed interest of its own.

Community Kitchens as Places of Solidarity

Cooperative Housekeeping

Growing community spaces

Wolve’s Lane Community Hall

Let us farm and spare us all the extras.

When you are stretched, it is exactly the care that becomes really hard to do. And because it is so bad to not do something with care, we will still do so, but that is when the burnout happens. So it is because care is just this unrecognized, it is a classic old thing not to value care work and it is something that is very present in our agroecologies.

The value of care

“Care is the thing that gets lost when you’re under-resourced”

Agroecologically articulated water policy

Eau de Paris

Beyond charity models and food waste

Good Food Box, Granville Community Kitchen

Agroecological food growing is a niche. All forms of agriculture will be needed to feed the planet.

Fighting the struggle of housing and growing rights together

A People’s Land Policy, Land Justice Alliance Network

The agroecological park as sheltered space and enabling environment

Here things are different

Urban infrastructure can kickstart farming careers!

BoerenBruxselPaysans

Building Block

Farming the Fragmented Land

The Farming the Fragmented Land building block calls for new agroecological imaginaries that allow distinctive food growing to transform and thrive in a heavily fragmented territory.

It is that big ecology of care, I would also say it’s a queering ecology. And by queer I mean about disrupting and dismantling white European straight male frameworks and contexts. And so we are decolonial in practice, and we go beyond just being feminists, as I said we’re queer and spiritual because a lot of us are coming with spiritual practices and beliefs. And so for us that solidarity is collective in arriving at collective understanding and values and each others offering something.

No agroecology without decolonisation

Granville Community Kitchen

Agroecological farmers are less productive but deliver ecosystem services. Let’s pay them for those services!

Building Block

Productive Housing Estate

The Productive Estate looks at complementary relationships between housing and food growing spaces. It tries to overcome the latent conflict between the capacity to exercise the right to grow and the right to shelter within an urbanized context.

The loss of farmers is not a problem as long as productivity rises.

Building Block

Agroecological Park

The (peri-urban) Agroecological Park combines territorial measures to protection of land and soil with specific initiatives to facilitate the agroecological cultivation of these protected lands.

Cooking together is a good start

Cuisines de quartier